Ben Stara is Ben Pantera — Towards the Clarification of a Philological-Historical Problem / בן סטרא בן פנטירא הוא (לבירורה של בעיה פילולוגית-היסטורית)

I. The oft-quoted story about the detention of Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrqanos upon suspicion of heresy (minuth) and his release has not been analysed in detail. The author agrees with the opinions of some scholars that the Tosefta version is the original one. It is further suggested that the Tosefta text is the only source of the version in the Babylonian Talmud. The author argues that, of the four parallel versions of this story, the Yalkut tradition (Micha § 551; Proverb §937) is valueless, and that of Midrash Ecclesiastes Rabbah (1, 24) is a contamination of the two main traditions. A careful comparison of the latter, the Tosefta (Ḥullin, 2, 24) and the Babylonian Talmud (Avoda Zara, 16b–17a, according to Talmudic MSS and uncensored editions), shows that they are almost identical in narrative frame and linguistic expressions. Their omissions and additions, and two significant variations, confirm that a single tradition is involved. A) The Tosefta reads: "Once I was walking in the istratia (= istrata = strata, i.e. via) of Sepphoris"; the Babylonian Baraitha has "Once I was walking in the upper market of Sepphoris." B) The Tosefta reads: "I found Jacob of Kfar Sikhnin, and he said something heretical in the name of Yeshua' ben Pantera"; the Babylonian Baraitha has "I found one of Yeshu Hannoẕri's (= the Nazarene's) pupils whose name is Jacob of Kfar Sekhania... he said to me 'thus Yeshu Hannoẕri taught me'." These differences are plausibly explained if we assume that, since the Babylonians used the Tosefta-Palestinian tradition, foreign terms and names had to be clarified for the Jewish audience in Babylonia. Of the many explanations suggested for the name ben Pantera (see note 11 in the Hebrew text), the author prefers the one implying that Jesus was the son of Mary by a soldier named Pant(h)era, a name quite common at the time. This interpretation is corroborated by the triple chain of Gospels—Rabbis—Celsus. A) Matthew (I, 18–25) and Luke (I, 26 ff.) were the only Evangelists to disseminate the tale of Jesus' divine and virgin birth. B) To combat this christological notion, the Yavneh (Jamnia) Rabbis, by referring to Jesus as ben (son of) Pantera, implied that Mary comimtted adultery with a soldier, Pantera. C) This suggestion spread outside Palestine and was cited after two generations by the anti-Christian polemicist Celsus, who ascribed it to a Jew (Origen, Contra Celsum, I, 28, 32). II. A somewhat samilar case of an ideological-polemical retort is that